My New Salganea taiwanensis!

Ty Panesthiinae Order Pt. 2/4

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This addition to Ty's Panesthiinae order is yet another new genus for me, Salganea! 😃 It's an interesting genus with adults often sporting some rough, almost spikey looking terminal segments and an overall different morphology from Panesthia and Ancaudellia. These Salganea taiwanensis are quite small and diminutive, even for this genus, and the adults in this package were about an inch in length. 

I find Salganea even harder to sex than Panesthia or Ancaudellia, (which are already difficult to sex, as males have very tiny terminal ventral segments that can be easy to miss, making you think they're females), so I have absolutely no idea what the sex ratio of my five mixed individuals is, but hopefully I end up getting offspring from them somehow. 😂 

I've got mine set up in a minimally ventilated container filled with a substrate of rotten cottonwood, and some rotten leaf litter for good measure. I'm keeping them humid and cool, around 68-72F°, and will be offering fruit slices every now and then as supplemental foods, (they'll mostly eat the wood, and maybe the leaf litter).

Here are some pictures of them:

Adults

Nymphs

An interesting new genus for me to work with, hopefully I'll be successful in breeding them, would be great to get them established in US Blatticulture! 😁

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, the last of my acquisitions from this particular order. I hope everyone enjoyed, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

Carabus Larva Surprise!!!

Huh, so, I've been keeping my Carabus nemoralis pair cool, humid, and in the dark, kinda trying to simulate the cooler seasons of the month, so that way in the Spring they'd breed and oviposit properly, because I had assumed they laid eggs in the Spring, not late Fall/Winter... But either I'm wrong about that, or my Carabus have really bad internal clocks, because the other day while doing maintenance on them I saw a couple big eggs through the bottom of the enclosure. 😯

So I just dug around in their enclosure and found half a dozen eggs, (a couple of which look to be duds or were damaged by the digging activities of the adults), and a single first instar larva!!! 😁 

Unfortunately though, I isolated the eggs to a minimally ventilated 2 oz deli cup with a thin layer of moist coconut fiber at the bottom, but apparently the eggs are SUPER fragile and should NOT be moved, as all of them died shortly afterwards... 😣

I moved the larva to an identical setup, (but with a chopped up Eleodes larva to feed on), and it's been doing good at least. 

I also decided to house the adult male separately from the female, just in case he tries eating any of the eggs or the larvae, (which the female could potentially do herself, no reason to have twice the danger in the enclosure unnecessarily). Hopefully the female keeps on laying eggs, I had wondered why she looked so thin compared to the male despite me feeding her plenty of food, guess she's just been converting it all to brood... And from now on I won't be removing the eggs, just larvae as they pop up.

Here are some pictures of the eggs and the larva:

So cool, looks like I've passed the first hurdle, getting offspring! Now, to see how easy it is to rear the larvae, and hope that the female lays more eggs... 😅

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, hope you all enjoyed, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

My New Ancaudellia hamifera!

Ty Panesthiinae Order Pt. 1/4

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That's right, me and Ty Randall (of Ty Dye Exotics) collaborated on yet another order, this time more Panesthiinae! 😁 Got to keep a couple species from this order, and here's one of them, Ancaudellia hamifera! 

Ancaudellia hamifera has been in US Blatticulture before, but sadly they went the way of most Panesthiinae here, and died out shortly after introduction. Hopefully this go around they'll stick around, as contrary to what I though from seeing pictures of them, to me they seem like one of the more unique Panesthiinae in culture! 

Nymphs and adults have a layer of short, golden setae on their last two dorsal abdominal segments, so they look like they have golden butts! 😂 The adults also kinda try to curl up a bit and do a little headstand, similar to some darkling beetles, though unlike those, these had no unpleasant defensive secretions to back themselves up. 

Like most Panesthiinae I know of, no life stages can climb, and adults are winged but tear their wings down to nubs not too long after maturing. 

I've got mine set up in a minimally ventilated container filled with a substrate of rotten cottonwood, several inches deep, and I'll be keeping them quite humid. I'm keeping them cool, around 68-70F°. They mainly feed on rotten wood, though I did also mix in some leaf litter just in case, and will offer fruits on occasion too. 

Here are some pictures of an adult female and a nymph:

Adult female

Nymph

Golden hairs on abdominal segments

A very cool Panesthiinae species, one I really hope breeds well for me! I'll keep you all posted on their development! 😁

Well, that's gonna do it for today, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

Some Teneb Updates!

Alrighty, got a few misc Tenebrionidae updates for y'all, let's start with my Iphthiminus serratus.

Unfortunately I've only got two offspring left, most of the larvae made it to a large size but then slowly petered out, for some their substrate had degraded quite a bit, perhaps too much for them to feed on? It also appears like they prefer to have larger chunks of rotten wood to bore into, not just crushed substrate that's been compacted, and unfortunately I had most of them on a pretty well crushed substrate. Also, I think I kept them too cool, as they seem to be doing better now that I've got them warmer... 

However, the last two larvae have been doing great, and one of them actually just pupated! 😁 So fingers crossed it ecloses successfully! 🤞 I haven't dug the pupa out of it's cell, just because I didn't want to risk it molting into a deformed adult as a result. 

Anyways, here are some pics of the pupa through the side of it's deli cup:

Looks like a standard Teneb pupa to me, almost like a mix between an Eleodes and a Zophobas pupa. 

The other larva also looks healthy and may pupate soon too, and all five of the original WC adults are still alive and well, so I should be able to get another generation going in the Spring I hope! Next time I'll try to isolate more larvae early on, and will use bigger chunks of rotten pine for them as well. 

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And now for a quick update on my Eleodes (Blapylis) sp. "ID", I actually released them like last month, to make room for the Tenebs I got from BIC. I documented the pupa of this species this go around though, and sold some to another breeder, so I'm pretty happy about that, maybe I'll keep them again one day, we'll see, but for now I needed the room, and didn't need to be keeping this particular species.

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Lastly, just thought I'd share an interesting observation on my Ceronopus concolor. Mine have made little semi permanent burrows in the sand on the humid side of their enclosure! They keep re-using the same burrows, and will even drag food down into them, pretty cool!

Here are some pics of one of the burrows:

I did partially bury the cardboard tubes in their setup, and so now some of them are using those as their little "burrows", which is good because I don't know how stable their other burrows really are, (even though I greatly increased the substrate depth for them), especially after I water the humid side of their enclosure.

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading, I hope you all enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

The Stowaway!!!

Ty Schaben Order Pt. 8/8

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Well, apparently there's one last addition to my collection from this package, it was hiding along with the Gromphadorhina sp. "Unidentified", at first I thought it was just a small nymph of that species, but it's molted and has much longer antennae than small hisser nymphs have, and looks different than hisser nymphs under closer inspection... I believe it's a nymph of a Rhyparobia species, either R.maderae or R.sp. "Gold", (which some say are the same species, as they can apparently hybridize with ease). I've never kept Rhyparobia before, guess I'm keeping one nymph now LOL, might as well rear it up and see an adult in person. 😄

I'm just gonna leave it in with the hissers for now, as Rhyparobia and Gromphadorhina actually seem to have pretty similar husbandry needs, and it's doing well with them.

I believe all life stages can climb, adults seem like they'd be too bulky to fly, but are fully winged. When disturbed I believe adults can hiss or stridulate, and all life stages will apparently try to stab you with their leg spikes and will expel frass on you should you grab at them. A feisty genus, and also rather uncommonly kept here in the US, not due to difficulty, but rather a lack of interest, they are kinda plain looking roaches...

Here are some pictures of the little stowaway:

Cute little thing, don't know how it got mixed in with my hissers, and that actually makes me concerned other hissers have been mixed in as well, either in my group or in the main culture they came from, which would suck... But hopefully that's not the case and this was just a fluke escapee Rhyparobia that somehow found it's way in with these hissers, time will tell I suppose. 

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, and for this particular order! 😄 Hopefully everyone enjoyed, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉